Sand and Stars (Morocco, Part 2)

I have always loved feeling like a tiny spec in an epic landscape. I never thought I would have the opportunity to go to the great sprawling sand dunes of the greatest desert in the world, the Sahara. There are few things that I have seen in the world that compare to it. But let’s start at the beginning.

We paid a ridiculously cheap price to be driven out to the desert in a minivan over the course of three days, and we saw some amazing things on the way.

 

 

The first day we drove up over the Atlas Mountains, taking a mountain pass that was very picturesque. Along the way we saw several small villages. These were made out of mud and hay blocks and very extremely basic, the inhabitants mostly sheep herders. Some were perched on mountainsides and looked like they had been there for thousands of years. These are the homes of the Berber people.

 

In Morocco there are two peoples. First, there are the ‘Berbers’, the natives to the land. The other are the Arabs, those who ventured across from the middle east preaching Islam. They now live together, pray to the same god and talk the same language, but there is no way a Berber is going to let you think he is an Arab.

From the mountains we came down to the outermost reaches of the Sahara, a rocky and gravelly plain that extends one way to the foothills of the snow-capped atlas, and the other to an oblivion of a moon like landscape. I couldn’t believe we could see such a contrast in scenery in just a matter of hours.

In the desert we saw more berber villages, usually built around a small oasis of palm tree’s. It was almost cartoonish in how cliché it looked.

We came across one large oasis that was unforgettable. The landscape surrounding was bone dry and rocky, an endless covering of brownish orange. But right there in a valleyed trough, a forest of palm trees was growing. There was even a small water course from a natural spring, and the locals had initated some cropping, which promoted the development of a small town. Here we saw women washing clothes in the stream water, wander through their cabbage and alfalfa plantations, and took in the bizzare scene of a forest sprouting out of a desert.

 

 

One town we came across happened to be the nicest and most ordered town I had seen in all Morocco. It was called Ourzazate, and I was surprised to learn that its wealth comes from Hollywood. Its natural desert beauty has been the backdrop for a bunch of movies, and there is a movie studio, a film museum and several nearby ‘locations.’  (Gladiator, Game of Thrones, Kingdom of Heaven, Lawrence of Arabia, etc). The town itself also had a nice old medina, or Kasbah, made out of mud blocks.

 

 

But the real reason we were out here was to see sand. Dunes and dunes of it.

 

The first hints came when we saw small rises of dunes no higher than me, spotted with camels (of course). Then suddenly, in the distance, we spotted the sharp rise of a giant sand dune, with several more behind it. As we drove into the town at the foot of the dunes, they loomed large behind it.

I’ve seen some epic landscapes in my day -  Mt Fuji, Grand Canyon, Uluru – and these sand dunes were every bit as awe inspiring.

We got on camels and rode for an hour and a half as the sun lowered casting shadows on the dune depression, and then finally set. The dusk washed over the landscape and soon we were riding in the dark with the first stars coming out above us. The endless dunes and the way they charnghed colour as the sun went down met my high expectations of the beauty of the desert. The whole time I was wide eyed, trying to breathe as much of the scene into my eyes as I could.

That night we slept in tents on dunes while the local berber men cooked us up a feast of targine – the best meal I’ve had in Morocco. After, we climbed our way to the top of a nearby sand dune and could see the headlights of the border patrol in the distance. The Algerian border was only 35 kms away and there are desert pirates all through that country (and it’s no secret Al Qaida is active in North Africa – there was a tourist targeted terrorist attack in Marrakech in 2010 which I thought about whoever I was in a busy area).

 

If the desert itself didn’t blow me away enough, the stars above sure did. I now agree with all the clichés about the desert having the best conditions for star gazing. The night sky out there was brighter than any sky I have ever seen. It was as in-your-face as objects millions of light years away can be.

It also happened to be Rins birthday, and the group of us sang happy birthday as we rode the camels in the dark.

 

That night Rin and I couldn’t take our eyes off the sky because we knew we would probably never see stars that bright again. It took us a while to get to bed because we kept telling each other ‘just one more minute.’

I will remember the desert and those stars for the rest of my life. That night I told the universe that I was sated, that I have had far more than one person deserves from it. 

Everything from here is a bonus.

 

The Medinas of Maroc (Morocco, Part 1)

Only a few hours after arriving in Morocco I found myself winding through the labyrinth like maze of alleys in the dark, hoping I would remember the route back to the hotel. I was walking fast, my heart was beating hard and I was glancing nervously down every narrow alley I passed. I was told that people you run into in the alleys after dark might be your friend, or might not. When I finally made it back to the safety of my room I wondered if I would ever muster the courage to venture out again. What god forgotten part of the world had I landed myself in this time?

Morocco hit me hard.

The medina is the old part of the city, narrow streets and buildings all crowded in on top of each other. Most towns here have a medina. The medina in Fes, my first stop in Morocco, has over nine thousand alleys and streets, and is the world largest car free urban area. It is enclosed by huge walls and is so infinitely complicated that most foreigners don’t stray too far from the big outer gates. Its unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and combined with the mosque minarets, the palm tree’s, and the snake charmer music and call to prayer songs, it reminded me of a the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba.

 

Fes, ‘the dark star of Morocco’, is one of the world’s most important cities for Muslim history. Geographically it is northern Africa, but culturally and aesthetically, it’s as Middle Eastern as you can get.

On my second day, after separating my money between my pants and jacket pockets, and even stuffing some in my shoe, I set off to get lost. For four hours I walked, completely confused and a little concerned at a few points, but totally blown away by the strangeness and the excitement of the medina.  Alleys were overcrowded by vegetable stands, meat stalls, metalwork huts, shoe shops and café’s, with donkeys and motorbikes and crowds of people squeezing through the narrow ways. Alternatively, the alleys could be harrowingly empty, dark and feeling like they are closing in. It’s in these streets that if someone asks for your wallet you comply without hesitation then find your way back to a busier area. (Having kissed my wallet goodbye before I landed in Taiwan, I am way overdue to be relieved of it, so I’m not going to be too traumatised or disappointed when it happens).

My time in Fez was filled with freight and awe, in equal parts. I took some pretty silly risks walking through the medina at night which I wouldn’t repeat and it might be as scared as I’ve felt all year. But the city itself was so energetic. There was so much to look at, all crowded together, it was all so basic, public urination, chicken being weighed and killed right in the open, a camels head hanging up at the butcher specialising in camel meat, the streams of people pushing past each other, the piles of fruit, the spices, the calls of touts trying to get you into their shop or restaurant or to sell you drugs (the latter being extremely common) – just the overwhelming commotion. This city is scrappy and smelly, not like the sometimes sterile cities of the developed world. It was humming with life, and I couldn’t help but nestle myself within it as deeply as possible.

(I would have taken better pictures of the bustling alleys but I was too hesitant to get my camera out.)

 

From Fes I travelled to Marrakech, having chosen the 10 hour bus which passed over Morocco’s highest mountains as opposed to the much shorted train which takes a different route. It was a great decision because we went as high to see snow, something I never expected to see in Morocco, and then came winding down from  the mountains heights through a series of small dusty towns all the way to the furthest stretches of the Sahara. It was a truly epic day of travel, from snow capped mountains to desert plains. What a world!

 

Marrakech is the cultural capital of Morocco, and for the first four days in town I rented a room of a local guy who sat around drinking coffee all day. He had a nice place and spoke English well so it was a cool base. Also renting a room from him was an old man from the UK we called Baba, meaning father in Moroccan. He was retired and was intent on spending the whole three months of his tourist visa staying in the one place and smoking hashish all day every day.  As if it couldn’t get stranger, a neighbour who came round of an evening was a former heavy metal singer from a  band called White Heat. This guy was so over the top, so caught up in the glory days that I thought he was just having me on, until I googled his band and watched a video clip from the 1980’s. A retired stoner, a washed up heavy metal singer, a lazy Moroccan, and an aussie travel; that’s stranger than fiction.

I walked from the city to the airport (which was an adventure in itself) to meet Rin. She flew all the way from Sydney to Marrakech via Dubai and Paris, and I greeted her at the airport with a fake rose I took from a hotel room and a T-Shirt I had made up that read ‘EK4NZ2014’, alluding to her year contract in Wellington. It was great to have my favourite co-star with me again to share the scenes.

Rin was as happy to see me as I was her, but she was shocked at how much weight I’d lost, how knotty and dreaded by hair had become, and how blonde it had got. She didn’t realise at the time (and neither did I) that I also had fleas.

Morocco hit Rin hard as well. Exotic tales and superficial tourism marketing of the country fail to convey how third world and chaotic it really is. As the taxi drove us back into the city, Rins eyes filled with tears as she realised she wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Rin is no stranger to the third world, having visited countries like Malaysia and Thailand and Albania within the last 18 months, but she was utterly overwhelmed. It took a few days for her to get comfortable. It didn’t help that that first night we got ripped off by the taxi driver, and then by the chef at dinner, and had maybe the most filthy accommodation we have ever shared (we had a mouse in the room one night).  There was also the warnings we’d heard about people being robbed in the alleys, and how local men are known to harass foreign women.

 

(This photo shows how a shoe shop can be pretty much on top of a butcher - its all I giant mix of life in the medina.)

 

 
 
 
 

But soon enough she was in the groove of Morocco with me and we had Marrakech to discover. Towering minarets, snake charmers with enormous cobra’s, night markets with extensive food booths selling skewers, tagines and cous cous, and an endless confusion of alleys and streets to explore.  The two of us strangers in a strange land.

Morocco is the reason I quit my job, I just didn’t know it at the time.

A Slice of Italia (Italy)

I got a ridiculously cheap flight from Malta to Italy, and so I was making my way into a country I had intended to avoid on this trip. Italy is the sort of place I always imagined doing comprehensively when I’m older, when I don’t have the energy or the enthusiasm for the more obscure and difficult places, and when I have the money to do it properly. But when opportunity arises in the form of dirt cheap flights, the journey can change, and suddenly I’m staring at the Tower of Pisa thinking ‘Holy shit that thing is on a lean.’

Things didn’t start off so well. When I arrived into the country I waited in the dark outside the B&B I booked for forty minutes, ringing the buzzer continuously. It was only when I had given up and decided to walk around and see what other accommodation I could find (an absolute no no in any other country this late at night), that a police car passed and I waved it down. They called the owner for me and I eventually got into a room. This is the sort of shit you have to go through when you can’t afford the Hilton.

 

Pisa was my base for my short stay in Italy. Obviously, the leaning tower is the key attraction here, and my expectations were pretty low which is why I was pleasantly surprised when I came from around a corner in a seemingly ordinary quite town to see this tower looking like it was about to topple over. The photo’s I’ve seen of it, and the photos I took, really fail to capture the lean.

The tower is in a complex of grand old buildings which are equally impressive – they just don’t have the novelty factor of looking so unstable. 

It’s one of the world’s most recognisable tourist attractions, in one of the world’s most touristic regions (that being Tuscany), in one of the world’s most touristic countries. But the town of Pisa itself is a university town with a river running through it and is unique in that it has so many visitors but most only stay an hour or two to take a photo of the tower and then get back into the coach, so it isn’t completely dependent on tourism. There is a lot of real life here as well.

From Pisa I used Italy’s efficient train network to explore the region with my friend Carol who I had met up with once again. Florence was only an hour away and was great to see. It’s a small city and has nice streetscapes and a river. A key attraction is the Duomo, an enormous cathedral in the centre of town with unique décor. But the highlight in Florence for me was the Pizza and wine I had for a long lunch in a cosy cafe as we waited for the rain outside to ease.

The leaning tower exceeded my expectations and so did authentic Italian pizza (just wish I could have got to naples).

On a sidenote, I asked a young Italian couple what were the best and worst things about Italy. They said the food and the mafia, respectively.

The small town of Lucca in the heart of Tuscany was my favourite. The town is situated within ancient defence walls and is quite quaint. It was nice to walk around and see churches and Alfa Romeos and narrow streets and architecture and old women riding bicycles on cobblestone roads.

 

We ended one day by exploring Livorno, a more working class town on the sea. Here there are canals which give one particular area of the town the name ‘New Venice.’ In this town I emptied my 2L bottle of water into a pot plant and went into a cellar and from the huge vat a man poured me 2L of red wine and charged me 2.5 Euro. Carol and I had a great evening sitting above a canal and watching the dusk wash over the sky behind it.

 

I visited a great local market in a town called La Spezia where there were hams and sausages and blocks of cheese and tubs of pesto for sale. From there I went to a smaller town right on the water’s edge, which was so rustic and so genuinely ‘traditional’ that it looked almost fake, like a movie set.  It made me understand that people come to Italy because it’s just plain nice. It’s pleasant, like a painting of a sunny day.

 

From Pisa it was great to be able to see the highlights of the Tuscany region, something I couldn’t have done with such ease in most other countries I’ve visited on this trip. Because this country has its shit so together, it allowed me to make the most of my limited time.

I’ve always been a little intense about the ethos of travel, in fairness to one’s self and the place being visited. And there I was, passing Italy in the blink of an eye. What a hypocrite! So what do I have to say for myself?

 

Firstly, the way the flight deal worked out I more or less chose to go to Italy on a whim.

But in a more metaphorical way, this is how I will justify my stay:

Italy is a big pizza and I had one very thin slice. That slice wasn’t very filling, but I got a dam good taste of most of the ingredients.

 

The Gozo Leathertramp (Gozo Island, Malta)

I caught the ferry from the main island of Malta to Gozo, the smaller and much less populated sister island. I had arranged to rent a room from an English expat in an old mill that had been converted into a house out in the paddocks. I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived – I had a large room with a terrace overlooking the surrounding countryside and the place even had the original mill stone. And that’s all for $15 per night! After the great time I had renting a room in an apartment on Malta, this just further added to the idea that hotels and hostels are boring and sterile and should be avoided where possible.

 

(That’s me sitting outside my room on the top level of the old mill.)

Because the farmhouse was in the middle of paddocks, I was woken early each morning by the sound of gun shots. It was that time of year when the migratory birds fly from Europe down to Africa to avoid the cold weather. Many species use Malta as a stopping point along the way, and it is part of the local pastime to go out with a couple of guns and a retrieval dog and shoot them out of the sky. The birds aren’t big enough to eat so it’s purely for the novelty of hunting, and there have been significant decreases in bird populations because of the hunting. Safe to say this tradition probably won’t be going on for too many more years, but it added to the spirit of the Farmhouse being woken each morning by gunfire as close as 100 metres away.

I spent most of my time on Gozo walking. With my music playing (PJ.LB) and a water bottle in my pack, I’d walk for hours exploring the headland trails and country lanes of the island. The island had these epically rugged cliff coastlines which were easy enough to explore, and the small towns were nice to pass through (each with there own out of proportion church). I was walking Forest Gump style, the Gozo Leathertramp.

 

 

 

At the heart of the island is the capital Victoria, with the old citadel. Its high walls were used to protect the inhabitants of Gozo from invading armies and plundering corsairs from Africa. When foreign boats were seen on the horizon, horns would blow and all the folk on the island would muster their animals and quickly harvest anything of value and retreat into the walls of the citadel.

In addition to the citadel, there are several old watch towers along the coastlines of Malta’s islands, much in the same condition as they were when they were used to look out for enemy or pirate ships.  Situated between Africa and Europe, this place saw many unwelcomed visitors from both directions, and their best chance was to hide with as much produce as they could so as not to be starved out.  It was great to explore these ancient structures and see the citadel looming at the heart of the island from a distant.

I walked and walked along the coastline and past salt pans and up to high peaks. During my walks I came upon three snakes and on one occasional had pellets that had been fired at the migrating birds come raining down all around me.

I got a chance to meet up with one of Erin’s relatives on the island. It was nice to meet him but things got a little awkward when I told the dog lover that I munched on some dog meat in Beijing earlier in the year. But I felt like I was the sane one later when he started going on about how aliens cultivated life on earth.  I shouldn’t have been surprised – it was a relation of Erin’s mum after all.

 

It was during my stay in Malta that I realised this is as close to poverty as I’ll ever get. My hair is long and tangled, and I have given up trying to comb it. I was still using a bus ticket that expired five days previous, having worked out a way to get around renewing it. I was on a budget of 7.30$ per day, which I was regularly meeting. I started to feel sorry for the people sitting next to me on the bus, that’s how long ago my deodorant ran out. And where do I even start with all my gear that has suffered the ‘wear and tear’ of a decade. My shoes are barely holding together, bits of rubber and canvas just hanging off them, my socks clearly exposed. My belt broke and the cheap shit one I got to replace it is just about done for too, but I took the time to dig a new hole nonetheless because I’ve lost 10kgs since I left home 7 months ago, the bulk of that probably within the last three months (I’ve never been able to see my ribs so clearly). My ‘holeproof’ socks have holes in them, and I’m walking around listening to music blaring out of one earphone because the other doesn’t work anymore.

And it might sound like I’m whinging, but I like this. This is the year of make do, because when else in my life am I going to be able to live like a hobo? I think going to bed hungry and having a mental argument with yourself over whether to have two or three slices of bread for breakfast is an experience all ‘children of the west’ need to have. It’s not good for your health, I must surely be anaemic by now and I haven’t had calcium in months, but it’s gotta be good for the soul.

 

 

I just know I’m lucky enough that if I wanted to get all brand new clothes and possessions and resume nightly  feasts I could, and that’s why it’s good to starve from time to time – to get a better understanding of how good being full is.

On my 24^th birthday I went to bed hungry and dreamt of food (not by choice that particular night).  This harsh budget was kind of an experiment for this part of the trip, but I had to know what living this style of life felt like at some point, and what better place to do it than Malta and Gozo where you walk almost everywhere and see amazing things every day for free with no fear for safety.

When I left Gozo returned to the main island I stayed in a dingy hotel for $7 per night and then went and stayed again in Pascals apartment (as mentioned in previous blog) as he said I could come and stay free of charge to help him more with his English.

My time in Malta, and especially Gozo, was one of the highlights of my trip so far. And that just goes to show you don’t need to be living extravagantly to be having a good time. In fact, the more extravagant you do it, the more comfortable you are, the less affected you’ll be.

No money could pay for the great time I had hiking around Gozo on empty belly in worn out clothes and rundown shoes, playing the part of the unemployed, knotty haired, gaunt and possibly mentally ill drifter.

The Obscure Rock (Malta Island, Malta)

I had never even heard of the island country of Malta until I met Erin. It lies in the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and Northern Africa, consisting of a series of islands, and is one of Europe’s smallest countries. But what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in history. I’m not usually one to get that excited about something that happened five hundred years ago – I’d much prefer to be affected by something in the present, but the amazing history of this place was unavoidable.

This ‘obscure rock’, as Sultan Soleyman referred to it before he attacked in the 1500’s, has been occupied again and again over the ages. Due to its strategic position between Africa and Europe, and its mid-point location in the Christian versus Muslim wars, the ‘obscure rock’ has been attacked and occupied by anyone who’s ever held stakes in the Mediterranean; Phoenicians, Romans, Moorish, Normans, French, and finally the British, who occupied until the 1960’s.

But the most famous occupants were the Knights of St John, a group of religious soldiers sent by the European countries to fight and die for Christianity. These soldiers were exempt from the civil wars of Europe and served the sole purpose of fighting Islam – kinda like the Nightwatch in ‘Game of Thrones’.  Malta was their base.

The most dramatic of confrontation on Malta was between the Ottomans from the Middle East, who sent 200 ships and 40,000 men, and the few hundred Knights of St John and about 9000 local men. Against the harsh odds, Malta was successfully defended, and the structures assembled in the 1500’s to defend the island against such an enemy are still intact and observable today.

But the thing that most amazes me is that the Maltese locals have endured all these invasions and occupations and somehow haven’t been completely wiped out somewhere along the long and bloody history of the place. There isn’t that many of them, but they’ve clung on like lichen to a rock.

And interesting enough, Erin is a descendant of these people.

 

 

Malta is small, and I made it my goal to visit every village and town on the island. I didn’t see them all, but I saw most. I saw nice harbours with colourful old fishing boats, rugged coastline stretches, and a lot of churches.  A leftover of the Knights of St John is the rampant Catholicism (98% of pop!), and churches are in abundance. Every small town has at least one big cathedral, and the one in the capital had the most impressive interior I've seen all year.

The island has some of the worlds most ancient buildings, even older than the pyramids (though not much to look at - seems like just a few well organised boulders really.) Its also a summer tourist hotspot for Europeans.

 

Noteworthy food is the great pastizzies, pastries filled with ricotta cheese or peas, and the Maltese sausage, really meaty and salty. Nice and cheap too. (I’ve already ordered a batch of Pastizzies from Erin’s mum for when I get home).

The most enriching experience I had in Malta was renting a room off a guy on the cheap. He gave me a great price of 10 Euro per night, on the condition (which I only learnt when I arrived) that I teach him a bit of English and chat and interact with him and his son so they could learn quicker.  At first I was a bit uneasy – it was a small apartment we were all sharing and there was some rather strange conversation that first night, but it ended up being one of the most invaluable chapters of my year.

Pascal and his son are from Belgium, living and studying English for a year in Malta. They also rented out the room next to mine out, and during my stay I got to befriend a young Italian couple and later a middle aged Algerian couple. We had BBQ’s, chatted over breakfast and dinner, and got to know about each other and our respective countries.

Who wants to stay in a sterile hotel when you can have such diverse roommates as these? It felt like a perfect set up for a sitcom.

 I was especially interested in getting to know the Algerian couple, and the woman in particular spoke English quite well. After about a week living together the conversations started to get interesting. We were past the small talk, and I was ready to have some big discussions with a Muslim woman, someone who I would otherwise never get a chance to talk with.  She told me about growing up in Algeria with the common threat of terrorism, she lost her brother in law to a terrorist attack, and being scared to go to sleep as a little girl for fear the terrorist would burst into her house shouting and shooting in the middle of the night.

On an equally dramatic note we spoke about gender equality, arranged marriage, religion and politics. For a level headed woman who taught computer science at a university level, I was outright shocked at some of the things she had to say.

After I told her that I don’t have much patience for theology, we got talking about talking about evolution.

‘I believe in evolution, but just not of humans,’ she said.

‘So humans aren’t animals?’ I asked, expecting her to concede my point. But instead she said no; humans aren’t animals.

Other fragments of conversation include;

‘There’s something inside a woman which means she’s more attuned to cooking and cleaning than men,’ she said.

‘So you think its nature over nurture for women in the kitchen,’ I said half as a joke, but was surprised when she looked at me earnestly and said ‘Oh, yes.’

She also had some equally outrageous things to say about arranged marriage, pork meat and Christianity. I didn’t even bother to ask her about legalised homosexual marriage.

I liked Fatimah, she was pleasant and witty, but I was shocked at the way she thought. I had always hoped that the educated minds of the world could always find common grounds in something like science and reasoning if we’re going to keep this thing afloat. But here I was, talking to university lecturer of computer science, science is in the title for God’s sake (pun intended), a leading mind in her own respect, and she wasn’t even scientifically literate.

It was kind of depressing.

Nonetheless, it was a great to be able to talk to her about the big bang theory over breakfast - the Devoted and the Infidel. And living with the Belgium’s was equally interesting and rewarding, just a little less provocative.

This bizarre experience made me never want to stay in a hotel again and put the cherry on top of my stay on Malta’s main island.